Slow Food

The Slow Food movement, coined in reponse to "fast food" , claims
to preserve the cultural cuisine and the associated food plants and
seeds, domestic animals, and farming within an ecoregion. It was begun
by Carlo Petrini in Italy as a resistance movement to fast food but
has since expanded globally to 50 countries and now has 83,000 members.
It now describes itself (humorously) as an "eco-gastronomy faction"
within the ecology movement, and some refer to the movement as the "culinary
wing" of the anti-globalization movement. It announced the opening
of a new University of Gastronomic Sciences at Pollenzo, in Piedmont,
Italy in 2004. Carlo Petrini and Massimo Montanari are the leading figures
in the creation of the University, whose goal is to promote awareness
of good food and nutrition.

Programs of the Slow Food movement include or have included:

* Seed banks to preserve native varieties, usually in cooperation
with more local movements
* An "ark of taste" for each ecoregion whose foods and flavors
are preserved
* Preserving & promoting local & traditional food product know-how
* Organizing small-scale processing, e.g. slaughtering, of short run
products
* Organizing celebrations of local cuisine within the region of production,
e.g. the Feast of Fields held in some cities in Canada
* Taste Education
* Educating consumers about the hidden risks of fast food
* Educating citizens about the hidden risks of agribusiness and factory
farms
* Educating citizens about the risks of monoculture and reliance on
too few genomes or varieties
* Various political programs to preserve family farms
* Lobbying for agricultural policy changes to support organic farms
* Lobbying against genetic modification of foodstuffs
* Lobbying against the use of pesticides
* Teaching gardening, especially to students and prisoners
* Moral purchasing of foodstuffs produced by locals using methods that
are morally acceptable to the consumer

From time to time, Slow Food intervenes directly in market transactions,
e.g. preserving four varieties of native American Turkey by ordering
4,000 eggs of these and commissioning their raising and slaughtering
and delivery to market.

Critics of the organization have charged it with being elitist, as
it discourages nominally cheaper alternative methods of growing or preparing
food. Slow Food responds by claiming to be working towards local production
and consumption which will exploit "best practices" of science
and professions worldwide but ultimately prove cheaper due to less reliance
on transport and energy and chemical and technology intensive methods.
These arguments parallel those of the anti-globalization movement, Greenpeace
and green parties against global export of monocultured foodstuffs,
especially GMOs. A central point related to these arguments is that
transport prices are artificially low because the true cost of fuel
(including the protection of shipping lanes and other military interventions
around the world) are not factored into the price of goods, and are
instead paid for indirectly through personal taxes.